The film tells the extraordinary story of how The Donald managed to get planning permission to build a golf course, a hotel and 500 luxury homes on a 452-hectare site covering some of the most beautiful coastline in Britain, including a Site of Special Scientific Interest. The unique environmental feature of the site - huge, shifting sand dunes - will be largely destroyed by seeding the area to create the golf course.

How did this happen? Essentially, it seems the developer used local insecurities about the decline of Aberdeen's oil economy to propose a new source of prosperity: an (illusory) golf economy. Trump's team asked Strathclyde University to conduct an impact study, which suggested that construction, golf course and hotel would result in thousands of new jobs for local people. As I explain in the film, this is not an easy argument to sustain. In reality, golf course construction is a specialised business, and the winning contractor has brought in their own trained staff from Ireland. The hotel, like most luxury hotels around the world, is very likely to be staffed largely by migrant workers. Indeed, the proposal included a 400-bedroom worker hostel!

Financial imperatives drive councils to allow development on sites they own, particularly parks, school playing fields and allotments (for which there is currently a waiting list of over 86,000). These are sites of real value to local people, and their loss is an obvious case of market failure. But restrictions on other land - especially intensively farmed green belt - can raise the market value of other open space to a level too tempting to resist.

Aberdeen's oil industry is not declining; production is steady. No oil field has been abandoned. Oil fields at the end of their lives require more labour rather than less. How else can Trump hope to sell five hundred expensive houses and nine hundred apartments.

By destroying the natural environment and the dunes where Aberdonians have been taking their informal recreation for generations, Trump is making it less likely that a high technology company would want to set up in the area.

Search the SERC Blog

Loading...

Welcome to the SERC Blog

The Spatial Economics Research Centre is based at the LSE and aims to provide high quality independent research to further understand why some regions, cities and communities prosper, whilst others do not.

Our research focuses on why there are disparities in economic prosperity at all spatial levels including regional, city-region, local and neighbourhood.

Visit the SERC website for more information on our research programmes, policy projects, publications and events.